Purifying Witch Rika
by roisaber
Summary: In its glory days, the city of Yharnam was like the capital of the world. Art, culture, and research inspired by the Old Ones changed the whole world for the better, and few suspected the terrors that would eventually be unleashed. Faithful pilgrim Rika makes her way to the Holy City and gives herself over to the Healing Church in soul, mind, and body.
1. Royal Lotus

Yharnam.

Yharnam, the Holy City. Yharnam, the splenderous. Yharnam.

My new home.

The first time I partook of the blood I was scarcely 14 years old. I did it to impress a boy – what was his name? Andreas? Angelo? It doesn't matter. He dumped me after the first time he got under my dress. What matters about that night wasn't the fumbling attempt at lovemaking by an inexperienced young girl, what matters is the blood. Sticky, toxic, coppery blood! More stimulating than cocaine; more psychedelic than witchfire – the blood distributed by the Healing Church is the single most intoxicating experience in the world, and all with no hangover the next day. The blood quickens the pulse, sharpens the eye, and expands the mind.

For years, I took the blood in secret, taking every precaution I could to avoid my parents and teachers and steal enough time to trip on the divine secretions. Despite my best efforts I was eventually found out. Partaking of the blood is against my parents' religion, and without hesitating for a moment, they threw me out of their house and into the streets. Good riddance. For the past six months I've been slinging pussy to blood-drunk farmers, merchants, and thugs to fund my pilgrimage to the capital of the Old Ones, Yharnam.

And now, at last, I'm finally here.

There are several guards at the southern city gate, but they don't pay me a second glance as I make my way into the city alongside throngs of pilgrims and merchants. I can't believe I'm finally here! As soon as I entered the Holy City's walls, I stole aside into an alcove and cast my gaze across the capital of the world.

It's bigger and more beautiful than I ever could have imagined. Buttresses and spires and bell towers loom over the city, proudly thrusting into a fog-whitened sky. The people of Yharnam bustled about hawking trinkets and foodstuff, and the air was thick with the smell of cookfires and coal smoke. The air was unseasonably chilly compared to my homeland beyond the southern sea, so I pulled my shawl more closely around my shoulders, covering the décolletage exposed by a working girl's outfit. I guess I'm going to have to buy some warmer clothes if it's already this cool in the beginning of autumn.

There was an address in my pocket, and I pulled out the thin strip of paper to look at it one more time. Directions to one of the Healing Church's facilities were written on it, given to me by a sympathetic nun I met on a ferry during my long journey to Yharnam. Directions to a church brothel, in fact, run by the Healing Church for the benefit of the faithful. The city skyline was pregnant with religiosity. Towering over the workshops, apartments, and storefronts were an endless procession of great cathedrals - epic monuments proclaiming the transcendent power of the Old Ones along with the piety of the worshippers who built them.

How different the religion of Yharnam is compared to the superstitions of my parents' backwards village! The blood, of course, is the biggest difference. Back home – or what used to be home - people caught with the blood are punished with lashes, or worse. Here in Yharnam, street vendors openly hawk it in the form of wines, tinctures, balms, or even straight-up injections. Another difference is the decadence of the religious architecture, compared to the harsh austerity of the shaman's amphitheater. The people of the south despise open displays of religious piety in the form of vast cathedrals and stained glass triptychs. Of course, there was something else, too, directly relevant to my situation. The self-employment opportunity I exploited to make it to Yharnam was openly encouraged by the Church as another form of blood mingling. As I continued to gaze across the cityscape, a bell started clanging in the distance.

Another difference about my new home occurred to me, this one a little more pressing. My parents' village had one paved road, while Yharnam spat me into a maze of alleys and byways form the moment I entered through the front gate. With a start, I realized that I had no idea where I could find the address I was looking for, and the sun was already dipping below the horizon.

With a surge of anxiety, I scanned the crowds for someone who might be able to help me. The faces in the crowd were a varied lot; foreigners, the blood-drunk, and merchants with serious looks on their faces and a hurried gait. A few cast glances in my direction, but it was obvious that they were more interested in what they might be able to get into me than in helping guide me to my destination. Finally, I caught sight of a nun with a vacantly pleasant smile on her face. Blood intoxication, I thought.

I made my way to her and called out, "Miss!"

It took a moment to get her attention. She seemed immersed in another world. Finally I pulled on the sleeve of her robe, and that broke her reverie enough for her to turn and look at me.

"Miss, could you please help me find the White Marble Salon?" I asked hopefully.

"Oh, my," the nun replied dreamily. "Such a place! Sister Byronia will be so pleased."

I took a deep breath and steeled my patience. Someone in the throes of a deep blood experience can be extraordinarily hard to reach. But her eyes finally cleared up and she focused on me, the strange and frightened young lady all alone in a long-sought paradise.

"I'm sorry, it's just the blood…" she said.

I nodded. I was no stranger to blood intoxication myself. As I looked into her eyes a dart of Insight passed between us. I felt naked, like an open book, and I was suddenly ashamed of my provincial upbringing and alien ignorance. In the nun, I felt a lifetime of self-sacrifice and hard labor, and a subtle, almost lascivious sense of humor hidden underneath. I couldn't help but wonder what service to the Healing Church had bequeathed her with such an attitude.

"Oh!" She said suddenly. "You have the sight too, don't you, Miss…?"

I curtseyed. "My name is Rika. Some, though only a modest amount."

The blood makes us psychic. Little by little, sleeping potentials are stirred deep within our souls, until we gain almost superhuman levels of insight and wisdom. As those who partake of the blood age, they become more and more alien in their intelligence. For some, like my parents, it seems like a grim price to pay for transcendence, and they forbade all contact with the religion of Yharnam in their ignorance. But I never felt the same way. To go insane is not necessarily evil. After all, what is insanity but extraordinary insight, a growth of selfhood far beyond the limits imposed by a petty humanity?

"I am Sister Antikythera. Why don't you walk with me; I'll take you to the Salon."

I flushed. "No, please, I don't want to put you to any trouble!"

Antikythera smiled. "It's no trouble. My errand today was not urgent and it can wait for long enough for me to lend a hand to a fledgling daughter."

I curtseyed again, and consciously slowed the pace of my walking to match her meandering stride.

"What should I know about Yharnam, and the Salon?" I asked as we walked.

"Oh! Well, this is the Holy City, of course, and the center of research into the blood and its source. Here we research the limits of the cosmos and maximize human potential through the use of blood. Blood ministration, blood healing, blood research, blood experimentation. We are blessed by the blood."

I nodded and narrowly avoided stepping on a rat that scurried across the cobblestone roadway. Well, this was a city after all, and even the best efforts at extermination can't rid us of _all_ the vermin. Antikythera didn't even notice.

"As for the Salon, well… have your parents told you about the birds and the bees, I hope?"

I laughed out loud. "I'm already familiar with the work that will be required of me."

"Good, then I don't have to explain it to you." Antikythera grunted. "The Church tries to make a place for all approaches, of course. As for me, I am a Vestal Virgin."

I found this shocking. Partaking of blood might make Sister Antikythera look young for her age, but there still was no way she could be less than fifty.

"Wait, you've really _never_ done it!?" I asked. I tried to stop myself from laughing, but I ended up choking on my own saliva in the process.

Antikythera looked at me sidelong.

"I won't begrudge you the form your piety takes if you don't begrudge me mine," she told me a little sternly.

I finally forced my coughing fit into submission. "I apologize. I didn't mean any disrespect."

"No harm done, young lady. No harm done."

Sister Antikythera led us to a staircase that seemed to climb halfway to Heaven itself. It was built out of grey marble, and lined with intricate statues depicting various horrific creatures of seemingly religious significance, though I couldn't tell whether they were meant to be demons or angels. We ascended the stairway slowly, and the nun occasionally had to pause at the stone railing to catch her breath. When we finally reached the top, she led me into a large square buzzing with activity.

The open quad was rich with city life. There was an open-air bazaar, and scores of stalls hosted shouting merchants trying to sell passersby fish, vegetables, spices, jewelry. Children played fetch with large dogs underfoot. A procession of monks was passing through the square, wearing black robes and chanting unintelligible scriptures in a long-forgotten tongue. Lovers sat close to one another and traded whispered secrets. Antikythera led me to a large stone building with jutting spires and massive bronze doors open to all the people of Yharnam.

"Here we are, Rika," Antikythera said. "The White Marble Salon. Tell Byronia to write once in awhile, will you?"

"Thank you so much for leading me here!" I gave the nun a hug, which seemed to surprise her.

"Farewell. I'm sure we'll meet again."

With that, the sister headed back towards the long stairwell, and I felt a pang of guilt for having her lead me all the way to the upper level of the city. I turned back and found myself in front of a set of doors that would be imposing if they weren't wide open to the city streets. The scent of incense wafted out from inside the Salon, and with one more deep breath, I entered the dimly-lit building.

The inside was flush with pink silk and candlelight. There was definitely something romantic about it. A few women a little older than me were lounging around, playing chess or reading or imbibing blood from crystalline goblets. One woman wearing a white dress that accentuated more than it covered got up and greeted me with a smile and an intricate mudra.

"Hello, faithful. Whom can I get for you today?" she asked suggestively.

"Actually, I'm here to meet with Sister Byronia. I want to join your order."

The woman giggled and nodded. "Oh, we're always happy to meet a new friend. My name is Elsa and I'm hostessing today. Let me go and fetch Byronia for you. It might take a few minutes so why don't you make yourself comfortable while you wait?"

I nodded, and one of the girls offered me a seat watching the chess match. They must have been well into the contest because the board was mostly devoid of pieces. The girl on the left had an intense frown on her face as she concentrated on her next move.

"I'm Chosette," said the woman who'd originally offered me a place next to her. "It's good to meet you."

"I'm Rika; charmed."

"Your accent isn't Yharnamite," observed one of the other ladies, a foreigner with chocolate-colored skin. "Oh, I apologize; I didn't mean to be rude. My name is Tyronnia."

A few others rattled off names, which I promptly forgot. The woman at the chess table finally lifted her Church Giant token and moved it to a new position, and the women watching the game gasped.

"Check," the player said levelly.

Elsa returned and tapped me on the shoulder.

"Abbess Byronia will see you in her office, now."

I followed Elsa through the halls of the Salon. It seemed to be laid out something like a high class dormitory, with blocks of rooms separated by lounges, kitchens, and lecture halls. We took a staircase up to the second floor – my legs will still a little achy from the long ascent into Upper Yharnam – and finally Elsa led me to an ornate office full of strange equipment and packed wall to wall with bookcases overflowing with books.

The Abbess herself was an ancient creature, with a few dozen strands of shock-white hair covering her otherwise bald scalp. She was wrinkled and liver-spotted, and her eyes were milky with age and blood intoxication. She was wearing the same style of dress as Elsa, though I can't claim it looked as good on the aged crone. Byronia raised her shaking hands, and intuiting her gesture, I put my hands within hers. They were cold, almost icy to the touch. In spite of the fact that the old woman was practically blind, her lingering gaze felt even more penetrating than Antikythera's had. I could almost feel her feeble fingers poking around inside my brain. In spite of her quiet good will, the sensation was still profoundly unpleasant, and I was ill at ease.

"Ahhh. Yes, yes. I see. Well. Yes, I think so. You'll probably do." Byronia coughed. "The spirits of the Old Ones whisper to me. You'll make a good little whore."

I blushed at the Abbess' bluntness.

"Bishop Logan. A sighted child. Micolash - a dream. Long lived and a fortunate death. No one should live to see their child go mad."

Byronia's babble was nonsense to me, but it still made me shift uncomfortably in the chair across from her. She continued to grip my hands tightly, and I didn't dare pull away. Byronia began to hum. The sound made me wince in pain, and seemed like rusty nails pounding their way into my brain through my ear canal. This time, I did try to pull away, but I was helpless to even move. The psychic power of this woman was immense beyond reckoning. Decade after decade of the blood had made her something terrifying – something more than human, unwillingly trapped in a human shell.

Finally, mercifully, she abruptly stopped singing and let me go. I withdrew my hands so quickly that I managed to elbow myself in the side, drawing a thin exhalation of breath. Byronia stood and grabbed a contraption from a table behind her. It was a glass cylinder with a base and top that appeared to be made from tarnished brass. She dropped it onto her mahogany desk with a startling thump, and then she retook her seat across from me.

"Look inside, child," the Abbess said. "Tell me what you see."

I took a deep breath, leaned forward, and peered into the tube. At first I could see nothing – just a distorted view of the room behind it, as though gazing through a poor quality lens. But as I continued to stare I noticed that there was something inside. It was wispy and dark, like smoke, but though it continually changed shape there was something about it that struck me as alive.

Maybe even sentient.

"I'm not sure, Abbess Byronia," I finally said out loud. "I see smoke. It almost looks like a living thing but I can't quite make out its shape."

Byronia nodded, and replaced the cylinder on a shelf behind her. "You have Insight, Rika. Not so much as a Professor of Byrgenwerth, but enough to bear a powerful child. You will live here, and mingle your fluids with those of Church officials and laymen alike, and you will give birth to a son who will shake the fabric of the cosmos itself."

I shivered. Hopefully, the Abbess was talking nonsense. I loved the blood, and the feeling of my psychic powers expanding. But to shake the cosmos itself – well, that sounded downright sinister. Hopefully it was just long years of blood intoxication talking and not a prophecy.

The Abbess muttered under her breath and spat. Momentarily, Tyronnia appeared at the door of her office, looking a little befuddled.

"Did you call for me, Abbess?" the dark woman asked in audible confusion.

"Tyronnia! This is Rika."

We'd only been informally introduced so far, so we each exchanged a curtsy.

Abbess Byronia continued, "Please provide Rika with a room and forward her her weekly allowance; she'll be our newest whore."

"You mean qadishtu," Tyronnia mumbled under her breath, but Byronia didn't skip a beat.

"Since you're an alien –"

"Immigrant," Tyronnia corrected without much hope.

"- please help Rika navigate the intricacies of Yharnam. Our city can sometimes seem unwelcoming to outsiders, and I'd hate for her to run into unnecessary trouble."

Tyronnia nodded. "Of course, Mother Abbess."

"Well, why are you both still here, wasting my time?" Byronia hissed. "I don't have many years left in this broken-down body and I'd _like_ to spend them communing with the Old Ones! See off with you!"

With that, we both scurried out of the Abbess' office, Tyronnia with a laugh and me with pinpricks of nerves. As we shut the door behind us, Byronia started screeching in an uncouth tongue, and I shuddered as a chill crawled from the base of my spine all the way to the crown of my skull.

"The old witch is a real piece of work, isn't she?" Tyronnia asked with a conspiratorial grin.

I tried to be respectful. "Well, she's been partaking of the blood for a long time… earning that much Insight would make anybody seem a little strange."

"Do you know she's really almost two hundred years old?"

I gasped. "Impossible! But how?!"

"The power of the blood works in mysterious ways. As for me…" Tyronnia laughed. "It keeps me just drunk enough to put up with the endless pawing by dumb Yharnamites who've never seen a black girl before. You'd better get used to it, too – your accent gives you away the moment you open your mouth. Where are you from, anyway?"

"The southlands, beyond the southern sea."

Tyronnia glared, though I could tell her anger wasn't directed at me. "The southerners are a bunch of superstitious and hateful hicks!"

"That's why I left," I answered with a sigh. "There was no place for me back home. I mean – well, Yharnam is my home, now."

"That's right, let's get you a room."

With a cheerful saunter that swayed her hips more than was truly necessary, Tyronnia led me back down to the first floor and down a hallway past another set of rooms. She stopped in front of room 108 and opened the door. The room inside was spartan without being unwelcoming. The room was smallish, though still larger than my room back in my parents' house on the ranch. The walls were paneled with mahogany wood. The floor was a mosaic of grouted stones, and there was a large empty bookshelf and a desk on one wall stocked with parchment, ink, and quills. A paraffin lamp adorned one wall, turned off due to the wan sunlight streaming in through a narrow window.

"You can decorate the room however you want, as long as you don't break anything," Tyronnia advised. "Here, let me show you the bathroom. We're going to be suitemates!"

Another heavy wooden door opened into a small bathroom that was shared with the next room over, and Tyronnia showed off a thick porcelain bathtub and sink.

"What's all that piping for?" I asked.

Tyronnia suddenly grinned and turned a valve. There was a brief, loud sputter, and then water started flowing out of the pipes. Running water? We had to bathe in hand-pumped wellwater back on the farm. In a short moment the water was steaming, and with surprised, I reached forward and touched it.

"The water is hot!" I exclaimed.

Tyronnia nodded. "There's a furnace in the basement. You can take a hot bath any time you like!"

My eyes must have been as wide as saucers, because Tyronnia laughed at my hick naïvité. It seemed all in good fun, however – she was laughing with me, and not at me.

A bell rang in Tyronnia's room, and I glanced at her curiously. She shrugged with good-humored resignation.

"Sounds like one of my regulars has showed up for a little rough and tumble," she explained. "We don't _have_ to do anything, but we're here to work for the good of the Healing Church. When you're willing to work, hang out in the lobby, and clients who come in will choose their pick from the available girls. Or they might ask for you specifically in which case your bell will ring. Got it?"

I nodded.

"Meet me for dinner in the common room at six bells, if you'd like. Why don't you take a load off? I'm sure you've had an eventful day."

Tyronnia left my room and headed to the lobby, and the first thing I did was strip off my clothes and start the bathtub flooding with steaming hot water. What incredible luxury! Yharnam was shaping up to be everything I could have ever hoped, and more.

Tyronnia must have returned at some point, because when I got out of the bath, I saw a clean dress of white linen in the style worn by the church prostitutes of Yharnam laid out on my bed. I dried off and slithered into it. It fit like a dream on a cloudy afternoon. It clung to my breasts in a way that supported them without stifling them, and gave me a bold cleavage that would be enough to attract any man. It exposed my belly button, making me feel a little shy; I'd always been somewhat self-conscious about my innie, somehow it seemed like a more intimate part of my body than even my breasts. The dress managed to be soft and firm at the same time.

I decided to spend the time before dinner exploring the White Marble Salon. In my searchings I discovered a library so full of books that there were some in haphazard stacks on the floor; a laboratory full of equipment whose purpose I couldn't even begin to guess at; and a basement full of strange mechanisms that kept the water hot and the air comfortable throughout the salon. I made a mental note to check out a few books from the library after dinner – I loved to read, but back home, reading was considered an improper pastime for a lady. Here, finally, I was free to read to my heart's desire, and I was determined to make use of the opportunity.

Finally it was six bells, and I filed into the common dining room along with many of the other girls, and a few clients. I was surprised to see that there were a few men in prostitution regalia as well; their outfits were different from ours, but the similarities were unmistakable. Well, I guess the Healing Church is full of surprises. Girls on chores duty stocked the tables with victuals, wine, and blood. I found a seat next to Tyronnia and piled some spiced potatoes onto my plate.

"Rika! How are things so far?" Tyronnia asked with an easy-going smile.

"Good! I found the library – I can't wait to get my hands on those books."

"Just be careful with them," a woman sitting across from us said darkly. "Praetor al-Sarab will have your head if you spill anything on them."

"Don't mind Hera, dear," Tyronnia announced, patting me on the forearm.

"Better she learn now than later," the woman retorted.

Soon, the two women broke into rapidly spoken gossip that I could barely follow. Apparently Chosette was threatening to leave the Salon and get married to a client who had spent the last two years trying to woo her, but Tyronnia and the woman I learned to be Aria both disapproved of the engagement. A bunch of people I'd never met were either pregnant, an unreformed shoplifter, angling for higher office in the Healing Church, or all three. I was full long before I stopped eating. I'd never experienced such a luxurious meal in my entire life, yet it was a daily occurrence in the well-funded Salon.

"I could get used to this," I murmured aloud.

After dinner, the girls broke away into various cliques and factions. Some went to the lobby to entertain the evening crowd of clients. Others made use of various recreational facilities, or retreated to their rooms for a quiet evening of contemplation. As for me, well – I had my own priorities, too.

"Hey, Tyronnia," I asked when I could get in a word edgewise. "When do we get any of the blood?"

She smiled back at me with a crooked grin. "Blood, huh? We have some available any time you want. Just follow me."

Tyronnia led me to a lounge towards the back of the building. The walls were full of bottles, each of identical make and manufacture. She grabbed one, and then led me by the hand back to her room, adjacent to mine. Aria joined us.

Tyronnia's room was decorated much like the main lounge. Pink silks hung from the ceiling, and big pillows were strewn haphazardly around the room like a children's game of tarot deck pickup. Aria plopped down in a cushion without a hint of self-consciousness, and I sat next to her, trying consciously to belong. Tyronnia uncorked the bottle with a loud pop, and then took a big gulp of the fluid before handing it to me.

I took a deep draught of the blood, and immediately, my fingers started buzzing with electrical energy. I gasped at the potency of the fluid – the blood that ever made it to my parents' village was always watered down twice and half-stale by the time it reached us. This was of another order entirely, and my heart raced in my chest, leading me to involuntarily grasp my left breast with my hand. Aria took a gulp and watched me with a mirthful grin. As the blood coursed through my veins, my body got hotter and hotter. Finally I could stand it no more, and without a conscious intention, I freed my upper body from the top of my dress, exposing my sweat-beaded breasts.

"Rika, are you okay?" Tyronnia asked with evident concern.

"I'm fine," I whispered. "This blood… it's so strong!"

"Healing Church Reserve," Aria agreed. "It's only for the clergy."

"Does that mean… does that mean I'm really a priestess, now?" I asked in a small, humbled voice.

"'course," Tyronnia said, taking another swig.

Aria added, "Or healer, or witch, or hierodule…"

"However you want to look at it," Tyronnia completed.

Tyronnia handed the bottle back to me, and I hesitated before taking another sip. The fire in my chest grew even hotter, and my toes curled involuntarily. With a sudden start of surprise, I realized that a pressure was building down in my belly, and I crossed and uncrossed my legs, torn between discomfort and the profoundest pleasure. The sensation grew even tighter, and with a sudden, shaking gasp, I had an orgasm without even touching the flower of my womanhood.

"Good, huh?" Tyronnia asked, stretching her shoulders.

The sensation dimmed a little, and I could finally strangle out a word.

"Wow."

"Sex is good anyway, but mm! I just love having a little of the blood beforehand; I cum every time," Aria confided, reaching over to fondle my breast.

I'd never done anything sexual with a woman before. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time I'd had sex for pleasure instead of profit. My heart pounded in my chest from the combined force of the blood and the massage, and I gave into the sensation, at peace at last, and among my own people after so many years of hiding who I was.


	2. Sticky White Stuff

I was woken up three times in slow succession. First, by a ray of sunlight that bullied its way through my room's thin vertical window. Second, by the duty bell clanging over my bed. And third, by Tyronnia, who dumped an entire glass of water over my face as I fitfully tried to reënter consciousness.

"Pffht!" I protested. "The Hell did you do that for?"

"You've got a client. Didn't you hear the bell?" Tyronnia asked with a grim smile.

"I, uh, guess so. How is it that there's already somebody asking for me in particular?"

Tyronnia shrugged. "Beatrella must have mentioned that we had a new girl, and a foreigner at that. I guess one of the clients wants to break you in."

I wondered if it should be strange that we acted so matter-of-fact about the whole thing. After all, in my homeland, such things are treated as the worst of all moral scandals. But the religion of Yharnam is a biological religion. An entire theology revolving around the mixture of bodily fluids, with the blood at the very center. I nodded and quickly threw on my habit, such as it was, while Tyronnia watched with languid interest.

In the lobby, Chosette and … was it Alectra? were setting up a new chess match, which I guessed to be their daily routine. There were a few more of the nuns standing around, patiently waiting to be put to use for the glory of the Healing Church. Beatrella sat at the registration desk. She was flanked by a pudgy bishop, well into middle age, who looked at me with a bemused hunger that made me feel shy.

"So, you're the new girl? Pleased to meet you. I am Bishop Pyotr. I hope this day finds you well."

I curtsied, which seemed to please him. "I'm Rika, from beyond the southern sea."

Pytor nodded.

"All over the world, people are given to grim superstitions, and idle philosophies, and arrogant, self-congratulatory rhetoric. But from all that dross of the world outside, the city of Yharnam calls to herself her own. The fact that you've made it here despite all the besieging evils of the outside world speaks highly of your moral character, m'dear."

"Thank you for your kind words, most Reverend."

"As for me… well, I've always been too busy navigating the cataracts of Church politics to take a wife. But, a man still has passions, after all; I hope the Church will provide?"

I saw what he was getting at.

"Of course, most Reverend."

"Call me Pyotr."

"Very well… of course, Pyotr. I'm happy to do in service to the Church a duty I once performed out of mere necessity."

The Bishop came forward and took my arm, and I allowed him to loop mine within his and I gently led him back towards my personal quarters. It was still morning though not early by a farm girl's reckoning – most of the other women were still getting breakfast and rubbing nuggets of sleep out of their eyes. My stomach rumbled, and I made a mental note to get breakfast first thing after fulfilling my duty to the church. The door to my quarters opened with a thin creak, and then there we were. For some reason I couldn't guess I was feeling self-conscious. In a way it was like my first time all over again – this was the first time I'd ever given my body for a calling higher than a loaf of bread or ferry passage.

"You're trembling. Are you alright, dear Rika?" The Bishop's tone seemed legitimately kindly.

"Yes. I'm sorry… I'm just a little overcome by the moment."

"We can take it as slowly as you'd like."

A sudden surge of playfulness erupted in my blood, and I threw myself against the Bishop, knocking him off balance and backwards into my bed. He slammed down against the blankets hard enough to lose his breath. While he struggled to regain it, I separated his clothes from his body and pecked at pink, flabby skin with giggling kisses. Soon, he directed my head downwards and towards his stiffening member. I took it into my mouth with one final laugh, and soon, we were going at it with the primal vigor of ancestral beasts.

When he finally climbed off me, some time later, we were both covered with salty sweat and other, stickier fluids.

"You're quite skilled, Rika."

I shrugged. "I've had practice. Besides, you're not half terrible either."

"Perhaps I am one quarter terrible?"

I laughed. "Perhaps."

"A lovely girl like you can go far in this city, if you make the acquaintance of the right people."

"Are you the right people?"

To my surprise, a pensive look crossed his face. "Perhaps. There's more going on here than you realize."

His sudden change in tone made me feel uneasy.

"What do you mean? Is there something I should be afraid of?"

There was a pregnant, uncomfortable pause.

"I should be careful in what I say," he finally answered, after visible deliberation. "Not everyone in Yharnam is to be trusted, Rika. In a clerical role like yours, you're bound to meet all sorts of people, from carriage drivers to great lords of the Church. Not all of them will have good intentions. There are some who… there are some who threaten to take the Healing Church down a dangerous path."

I forced myself to laugh. "That's a lot to lay on a working girl on her first day, you know."

"A working girl? No, you're far more than that. Not only are you a nun of the Healing Church, but I sense that you might have an unusually developed psychic power, as well. There are those who might try to put it to evil uses if you're not careful."

"So what should I do?" I asked in a small voice.

He shook his head. "Just trust your instincts. Don't let anyone talk you into doing anything you're uncomfortable with."

"Okay."

He suddenly reached across and gave me a meaty hug.

"I'm sorry if I've worried you. Yharnam should be a happy place. The Holy City will overcome all adversity, and triumph!"

I nodded. "To Yharnam!"

Pyotr grinned at me.

"And to the lovely Rika. Oh, one more thing."

He reached into his robes and pulled out a small leather packet. He tried to hand it to me, but I shook my head.

"We're not allowed to accept any personal tips," I told him. "All donations go to the White Marble Salon."

"It's not money. You can take it; Bishop Pyotr's orders."

I hesitated for a moment, but he'd been kind to me and I didn't want to offend him. If it was something precious I could just drop it in the donation box myself after all. I opened the little pouch and blinked in surprise. There was something small, like a red marble, nestled in the bottom.

"What's this?"

"It's coldblood dew. It's blood so pure that it's been rarified into a solid. Keep it with you, and in a time of need, it just might give you the strength you need to pull through."

I decided the gift would be safe to accept, and I slid it into a drawer in my desk.

"Thank you, Pyotr. You've been very kind."

We both assembled our clothes, and I guided the Bishop back to the lobby, where he traded greetings with some of the other girls. I guess he was a regular. Well, he seemed vigorous enough in the sack, even at his gently advancing age. My stomach rattled again, more insistently this time, and I headed to the Salon's dining room to see what was available for breakfast.

Ah, but what a feast! Bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. Strawberry jam that was so sweet that it made my tongue tingle almost like a draught of the blood. Back in my home village, we would only have a feast like this on a solstice or equinox holiday, but here in Yharnam it was a daily event. The people who donate to our Salon must be generous, that we can afford such glorious décadence. I took a seat at the table next to a woman I hadn't met yet. To my horrified amazement, the moment she saw me sit down next to her, she got up and walked out of the room, leaving her breakfast unfinished.

Uncomprehendingly, I turned to the other girls clattering their silverware against their plates. One of them – Marqè – finally caught my eye.

"Sorry about that. Elena… well, Elena doesn't like foreigners. She still treats Tyronnia the same way, if it makes you feel any better."

I sighed. "Not really."

"It can't be helped. There are some in Yharnam who think everything from the outside world is an insidious form of corruption."

I blinked. "So, what? Do the strawberries she was eating grow in this climate?"

Marqè laughed uproariously.

"Oh, of course not. But there's no use trying to reason with her; she's made up her mind to be a bitch and she's sticking to it."

I digested this information, along with a thick slice of bacon.

One of the male courtesans took Elena's vacated seat, pushing her plate away towards the center of the table. He was young, little more than a boy, and he had a surprisingly clear complexion considering his age. It must be the blood. Along with its euphoric and curative qualities, it must be salubrious for the skin, too.

"She acts that way to me, too. She thinks it's _unbecoming_ for men to share this particular role in the Church hierarchy. Hi, I'm Orric by the way."

"Isn't that a bit hypocritical?"

"Who knows how the gears inside Elena's head turn."

"So, what are you gonna do with your allowance?" Marqè asked. "After all, you must not know much about the City since you only arrived yesterday."

"Well, I do know that the City is _cold_ , so I think I have to buy some winter wear. I don't really know where to start, though."

"I'll go with you! I could use a new shawl, anyway."

"Please, I don't want to put you to any trouble," I stammered.

"You'd better just let her take you," Orric advised. "Once she frenzies for shopping, you'll lose life and limb if you get in her way!"

"Well, okay."

Something I'd been meaning to ask for awhile popped into my head.

"How exactly is the duty roster… decided? A lot of the girls seem to come and go as they please, while others are stuck doing the washing up," I said, gesturing towards one of the nuns who was clearing dirty dishes off the table.

"Oh, there's a big board in the conference room. We all take turns doing the various jobs, and of course, a client might ask for you at any time. Don't worry about Agarta over there; you'll be the one scrubbing her plates soon enough," Marqè answered with a tinkling laugh.

"Oh. So much for getting away from farm labor, huh?" I asked sardonically.

"It's not so bad," Orric interjected. "It's only for a week at a time, and there's enough members around that it'll be a couple months before you have to do the grunt work again."

Marqè said, "The board changes every Martyr's Day, so you're off the hook until then. I'm on client duty right now, but the other girls won't complain if you're away for a few hours just as long as you're – tee hee – pulling your weight, if you know what I mean."

I groaned at her truly terrible joke.

"Come on, we're both getting older while you sit here," Marqè asserted, tugging at my wrist. "Sales await!"

The streets of Yharnam were laid out in a dizzying pattern. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and a Marqè led me through as many dark alleys as high streets as we made our way through the bewildering metropolis. A few men catcalled us, no doubt inspired by our rather peculiar habits, but they didn't do anything aggressive. I suppose there was precious little need – after all, they could come and avail themselves of our services at any time, after all. Suddenly, Marqè emitted a piercing shriek so loud that I swore I could hear it in the humor of my eyeballs.

"Ewwwwww! Look at that _rat_!" she groaned.

Digging through a pile of refuse on the side of the alley was the biggest fucking rat I'd ever seen. It was fully the size of a house cat, but with wickedly sharp claws and fangs. It looked up at us and hissed, and I don't know whether I was hallucinating from terror, but it almost looked as if its eyes were glowing violet.

"Come on, Rika, let's get out of here!" Marqè cried sharply.

We outright ran until we were out of breath.

"That thing was _huge_ ," I said, almost awed by the bulk of the horrific creature.

"It's the biggest one I've seen yet," Marqè replied darkly. "I could swear those things get bigger – and meaner – every year."

"Did you… did you see its eyes?"

"No. Why, was there something unusual?"

I hesitated. "No. I think I just panicked."

"I don't blame you. Like, ew! I mean, like, ew!"

She led us down a different alley, up three flights of stairs, through a crowded bar, and across a narrow bridge terrifyingly devoid of handrails. Finally, we found ourselves on a busy high street. Crowds of Yharnamites jostled for position entering and exiting textile stores.

"I can't believe it!" I gasped in astonishment. "Just this boulevard is bigger than my entire village back home!"

Marqè answered, in a voice tinged with civic pride, "You'd better get used to it. There's a dozen streets all selling clothing and jewelry that are just this big all over Yharnam. This one's best, though – it has Madam Arrivia's shop!"

Marqè led me into a crowded clothing shop, seemingly no different than all the others. I was astonished by the vast arrays of shawls, coats, dresses, and hosiery all available for sale. Just the variety of colors alone was dizzying to me – most things back in my village were non-descript blacks, browns, or tans.

"Good prices, too," Marqè whispered in my ear. "But you can always haggle her down another 20%, if you're polite."

The allowance granted to me by the White Marble Salon was not enormous; I suppose most of the donations went to keeping the chapel in facilities that bordered on opulent. Still, I was able to buy a thick winter coat as well as a new pair of boots and still have enough left over for a shawl studded with sparkling quartz stones. I was thrilled. I could have saved money for half a year and still not been able to afford anything so nice as the fashions of Yharnam.

When we left the shop, however, it was immediately clear that something had happened. A murmuring crowd was jostling forward towards the center of the circle, where town watchmen were shouting at them to make room in response. Marqè tugged on my sleeve but I couldn't resist joining the rubberneckers. If Yharnam had threats to offer as well as luxuries, it would be best to make myself aware of what was out there. A doctor's coach slowly forced its way through the unwilling crowd, and with a few deft kicks, elbows, and whispers, I was able to make my way almost to the front of the onlookers.

I was only able to catch glimpses of the scene through people's pressed-together bodies, but what I saw filled me with dread. A dead man was one thing, but… From the looks of things there were several victims, and they weren't merely dead; they were disassembled. Here was a pile of entrails, there was a children's arm. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the gristly scene. Over the whistling of watchmen trying to make room for the carriage, I was able to catch snippets of conversation.

"Bastards at Byrgenwerth! If they can't keep a leash on their toys, they shouldn't be allowed to have any."

"Maria! Maria! Oh god, can't anyone help!?"

"Just came out of nowhere… biggest I'd ever saw."

"Make _way_ damn you! Can't you see there's people injured here?"

Marqè tugged on my sleeve again, and drew so close that I could feel her hot breath on my ear as she spoke.

"Come on, Rika. Let's get out of here before this gets any uglier."

I nodded, and we threaded our way to the back of the crowd.

"What… happened back there?" I finally screwed up the courage to ask.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I've never seen anything so awful. What could have done something like that? A bomb? But if it had been a bomb, we should have heard the explosion…"

I shook my head. "It looked almost like the work of… a beast?"

Marqè shivered.

"I can't imagine what kind of beast would be capable of something like that. Even a bear…."

Our hearts thundered in our chests as we hurried home. We shared an unspoken agreement that it was imperative that we make it back to the Salon before nightfall, so we broke into a jog whenever the physical and human topography of the landscape allowed us. But the time we got back to the Salon we were both flushed and out of breath.

"You two look like you've been having fun," Elsa observed with a coy grin.

"Cut it," Marqè replied sharply. "No, I'm sorry. But we were caught up in something on Logarius High Street. People got killed."

Elsa blanched. "What happened?"

"We don't know," Marqè said.

I was still stunned and didn't know what to add. "There was a lot of blood."

"Why don't you two go talk to the Abbess? Maybe she'll be able to…"

I shook my head. "Sorry. I think I just want to go to bed."

"Of course," Elsa responded. "I'll tell anyone who asks after you that you're indisposed."

"Thanks."

I went back to my room. Tyronnia was in the bath – having left the door to both of our rooms open – and I gently but firmly closed it. I wanted to digest the horror I'd just witness, which struck like a bolt from the blue. I threw my new clothes on my desk, collapsed into my bed, and had a long cry. How could the day have gone so suddenly wrong?


	3. Flame Butterfly

Days, weeks and months went on just like that. I lived a happy life and gave in to all the guilty little pleasures that make life worth living. I was wreathed in the scent of sex all day, and I adored the feeling; a thin sheen of sweat and fragrant sexual fluid made me feel like an athlete, and a flower. Men came and went just as they always do, whether you whore yourself or not. For me, this was to be the wealthiest time of my life.

I didn't know it, then.

"Rika."

I looked up from my reverie. There was a strange man in my bed, with a concerned look on his face.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Nothing." I looked at him, freshly sexed and naked on top of my sheets. Suddenly I hated him and had no idea why.

"You look sick."

" **What**!?"

I felt a hot surge of anger flash behind my eyes like a meteor. Suddenly, my paraffin lamp shattered, spilling chemical-smelling naphtha all over my hardwood floor. My fear left me with the same abruptness with which it appeared. My blood turned chilly within my veins.

I felt small and childish and alone.

Without a word, the blonde man assembled his robes and left my quarters with evident haste. I wanted to say something before he left but I couldn't think of any words. Part of me wanted to chalk it up to a bizarre coincidence, and pretend it never happened. Part of me wanted to run to the lobby and throw myself into the arms of the nearest client who would have me. But somehow, I knew that it wouldn't be a real solution, it stung my intuition to disregard what had happened so easily. So instead, I just laid face down in my bed and cried.

It was seven bells in the evening by the time I finally composed myself. I went into the bathroom and thoroughly scrubbed my face, and then got dressed in the White Salon's standard issue outfit, feeling like something less than myself. I quietly hurried up to Abbess Byronia's office, and knocked first gently, then loudly on the door. Finally I heard the Abbess spit a curse and hobble over to let me in.

"What is it, girl?" she asked in something less than a charitable spirit. "I was trying to rest these old bones for a change."

I knew for a fact that the Abbess slept for twelve hours a day, but decided not to press the issue.

"I broke a lamp," I admitted.

The Abbess rolled her milky eyes. "Then learn to exercise some self-control, and stop bothering me!"

"No, Abbess. I broke a lamp on accident… with my mind."

"I see." Her voice was a little softer this time. "Involuntary telekenesis is a potential side effect of expanding psychic ability. Have you been drinking excesses of the blood?"

I found this difficult to answer.

"Excess? I don't really-"

Byronia cut me off with a grunt. "More blood, less human. Everybody knows that, girl. If you aren't careful you'll start seeing monsters under your bed. Abstain from the blood for a month."

I flushed with irritation. "A month!?"

"I'm not accusing you of anything, Rika. I'm only thinking about your own well-being, and the well-being of the other girls of the Salon. Today it's a broken lamp, easily replaced at market for a silver penny and a smile. Tomorrow it might be somebody's spine. Do you understand?"

"I understand," I answered, deflated.

"The blood changes us, Rika. See to it that you don't change too much too fast and become someone you don't want to be."

I half-heartedly curtseyed and left the Abbess to her dreams.

Still feeling sore and looking for advice, I returned to my wing and knocked on Tyronia's door. In a few moments she opened it, and I gasped at what I saw. She was wearing an outfit of black leather with a fat pink feather boa wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. In her hands rested a vicious-looking riding crop. I couldn't suppress my giggles.

"What, you want to join in?" she asked, gesturing at me threateningly with the weapon.

"What in _Yharnam_ are you wearing?" I demanded.

Tyronnia just shrugged. "One of the clients bought it for me. He likes it when I beat him. Don't you, worm?"

"Yes, mistress," a weak voice answered from somewhere within the candle-lit dimness.

"Ooohkay," I finally said. "I'll just leave you to it, then."

Tyronnia brandished the crop at me one more time. "You can still make good on my offer, you know."

"I think I'll pass."

"Suit yourself," she replied with a shrug.

I was grateful when she closed the door, but I could still hear the smack of the crop against supple flesh even through the thick wooden door separating her inner sanctum from the hallway.

I headed to the dining room instead. Fortunately, Marqè was there, taking coquettish spoonfuls of some custardy desert. She beckoned to me and I gratefully slid into the open seat next to her.

"What's new?" I asked in a somewhat strained tone.

"Well, did you hear about Chosette? She's finally leaving us, at the end of the week."

"Is that so? She and the boy are really running off to be married, right?"

"That's right. She says she'll still come by every now and again, but she wants to have a child, after all. She's going to stop taking the womb-closing herb so something tells me we won't be seeing her again for some time."

I smiled at the thought. "I guess everyone gets out of the game sooner or later. I can't imagine the Abbess has many clients."

"I doubt it! Still, you know men; there's somebody out there for everything."

I shivered at the thought of the Abbess… well.

"Hey," I said. "Do you think I've been over-indulging in the blood? The Abbess seems to think so, and she's forbidden me from taking any for a whole month."

"Wow, that's unfortunate. And a little long, don't you think?" Marqè looked pensive.

"I don't know. I had a surge of … something, today, and I ended up breaking a lamp in my room. I guess I can see why the Abbess is worried."

"Be careful, Rika. The Abbess has been the mother hen of the Salon for a very long time. When she gives advice, it's to your benefit to listen."

I had a light dinner and continued to talk with Marqè for at least an hour. We chatted about clothes, clients, and cuisine, occasionally punctuated by the easy-going silences shared by friends. Finally, she got called away by a client, so I made my way to the front to perform lobby duty for the evening. In some ways, I'm a saleswoman, a psychiatrist, and a masseuse all in one. Prostitution is a customer service job with an extra emphasis on the service. The main thing is for clients to leave the Salon feeling better than when they came in, and for the most part, they're coöperative in the endeavor. You might be surprised just how normal the clients are. Most people who visit the Salon aren't deadbeats, or sadists, or losers. They're family men looking to avoid their harpy wives for an evening. They're young students who are too busy educating themselves to have a proper relationship, but who still have that uniquely intense human sex drive. For animals, they're only in heat for half a season of the year, and that only the mindless instinct to perpetuate their species. Humans are different. For us, sex is the hopeless pleasure, and the indefatigable pain.

"Miss?"

A man stood beside me while I lounged and watched Chosette in her element – stomping the crap out of a client in chess. The man across from her was visibly furious but didn't dare do anything rude, while she had the smug, self-satisfied smile of a person expressing a conscious talent without so much as a hint of affected humility. I looked up from the game and towards the man who had requested my attention.

He was … average looking. Middle of the road height; middle of the road weight; the man had brown hair, brown eyes, and thoroughly unmemorable features. I guessed that he was a merchant. He had uncalloused hands and a shallow torso, meaning that he couldn't be a miner or an engineer. His voice was a mid-range tenor. There was no unconscious vibrato that would mark a trained singer, and he didn't have the salt-blasted complexion of a sailor. He looked nervous. I stood up and immediately curtseyed.

"I'm Rika. What can I do for you today?" I asked with unpracticed ease.

He looked at his feet and shifted uncomfortably. After months and months in the Salon, I recognized the body language immediately. He wanted me. He couldn't bring himself to say it, but he wanted a total stranger based on nothing more than the color of her eyes, tone of her hair, and lazy poise of her back against a chaise longue. In cases like these, it's best to be forward. Without waiting for him to answer, I grabbed him by the wrist and half-dragged him into the nearest supply closet. He didn't want a half hour of demure foreplay. He wanted sex, hot and fast and unconsidered.

Fortunately, I was able to ready myself quickly, ready enough that it only hurt a little when he hiked up my dress and pushed his way into me. I let out a hollow gasp and lifted my right leg around his back. I barely had time to adjust as he started rhythmically pounding me in the total darkness of the supply closet, and I winced a little as he honed in with laser-like precision to a sore spot near my cervix. And then, as quickly as he started, he finished. He groaned loudly as he thrust one, two, three more times into my pussy, shooting a stringy pulse of fluid into me each time. We held each other for a couple minutes afterward, sweaty and spent. I didn't come but to be honest it was for the best; I felt a soreness down below that would probably leave me out of commission for the rest of the night.

"Wonderful," he finally whispered. "You were wonderful, Rika. I guess I should tell you my name, I'm-"

I whispered back, cutting him off, "No, don't! Or at least, don't feel that you have to."

He took a couple more deep, heaving breaths, and then pulled up his pants and exited the closet. I gave him a few respectful seconds before following him out. Several other girls had been listening outside with gentle amusement, and they gave me a round of semi-sarcastic applause.

"Boy, Rika, you're…. efficient," Etienne announced with an unsubtle snicker.

I laughed. "He did all the work."

The soreness in my crotch continued to discomfort me, and I already rued that I'd been forbidden the blood. The blood does so many things. It makes us horny and stimulates healing, which I'd come to rely on on several occasions, when my body just wouldn't cooperate with the needs of my job. I found myself annoyed with the Abbess' stricture. Then I remembered the sudden shattering of my lamp, and shivered.

I ended up retiring to my room. I took a long, hot bath – such a luxury, one I'll never cease to be amazed by – read three chapters from a speculative fiction novel about Yharnam's mysterious founders, and finally fell asleep.

I had many dreams that night. Dreams of strange, far off cities, so alien that they might really have been another world. I dreamed of towers so tall that they dwarfed Yharnam's tallest and most stately cathedrals, and they were all lit up in bright colors that made the paraffin or gas lanterns of my home seem like weak children's toys in comparison. I was intimidated by the strange imagery. But it all came so disconnected, and before I could feel a tinge of fear, the scene would change and I'd be in some other place, equally strange, equally huge and confusing and bright.

I awoke the next morning to a loud pounding on my door. It was louder than it should have been, and a hard pit of anxiety formed in the bottom of my stomach. I opened the door to see Tyronnia and Marqè, both of whom bore looks of extraordinary concern on their faces. I instinctively slipped the satchel containing the hard marble of coldblood into the folds of my dress.

"What's going on?" I asked, responding to the looks on their faces intuitively.

"He's here," Tyronnia hissed.

"He? He who?"

"It's Micolash. The Byrgenwerth scholar!" Marqè answered quietly. "Every so often he comes here and selects one of us to join him at the university. The girls he chooses don't come back."

Tyronnia added darkly, "Sometimes they do. Remember Sister Alexis?"

"What do I do?" I asked.

Their fear was making me afraid.

"There's not much we can do. The Abbess' hands are tied by the higher-ups in the Healing Church. We all line up in the lobby and Lord Micolash chooses whoever he wants."

"Does he… hurt them?" I asked in a small voice.

"Nobody knows," Tyronnia replied. "Sister Alexis was never right again and she died shortly after returning; nobody could figure out why."

"But…"

Marqè shook her head. "Come on, let's get this over with. Probably it won't be us. If there's any pattern that can be made sensible, it's that Lord Micolash chooses the girl with the most psychic talent."

"Just the name Byrgenwerth gives me the creeps," Tyronnia said.

Without much in the way of choices, the three of us joined the other girls waiting in the lobby. Eventually, we were all assembled, and I saw a dozen women I'd never noticed before in my various explorations of the Salon. Al-Sarab had a very troubled look on her face. Chosette sidled up to the Tyronnia, Marqè, and I, and the poor girl was trembling with fear and pent-up fury.

"Now of all times!" She hissed to us under her breath. "How could this happen? That goddamn bastard! I was so close to finally getting married…"

Tyronnia whispered back, "You'll be fine. I'm sure of it."

"Al-Sarab is probably the one really in trouble," Marqè said quietly. "Everybody knows she's got some of the most finely honed senses of any of us."

The Abbess raised her hands, and we all fell silent, full of private anxiety. Two Healing Church soldiers entered the Salon and flanked either side of the door. Finally, Micolash entered. That it was him was obvious at once. He was like no person I'd ever seen. He moved like an angel, great and terrible and holy all at once. He radiated psychic power like a sun. Here was a man who could crack apart worlds.

Physically, he was taller than average, and slim almost to the point of being emaciated. His cheeks were shallow and I guessed his age at somewhere between an ancient thirty and a youthful ninety. There was something almost comically non-descript about his appearance, at least in comparison to the shining center of his psychic authority, which he commanded almost unconsciously. His eyes were clear and bright, luminous like sunlit fog. I knew in that moment that we were fated to be together.

Love? It was nothing so coy and playful as love. It was great and terrible like a summer typhoon. Nor was the feeling lust. I wanted to give myself to him, I _needed_ to give myself to him, but sex was too clumsy, too fumbling, to fulfill the need he generated within me. I needed him to do horrible things to me. I needed him to make me suffer. I couldn't think of anything else, I needed to go on being in his presence. Without a conscious intention, I reached into my satchel and pulled out the small marble of coldblood. It only took a small amount of pressure. The marble shattered between my fingers, and a single tiny shard of glassy blood penetrated my skin. Immediately, I was overwhelmed with a stark, biting sense of otherworldliness.

"Rika! Your eyes….!" Tyronnia hissed.

But I was blind to them now, blind to all of them, blind to everything but Micolash. The blood intertwined with the blood of my body and made us a single unitary organism. Micolash started, and cast a glance my way. He immediately abandoned his questioning of al-Sarab, and women parted like a sea to allow him to come to me.

"You. What's your name?" he asked in a voice like crunching gravel.

I would be strong. I would be strong. I would answer him.

"Rika," I finally managed to say through a constricted throat.

"You'll do. Come with me."

Tyronnia couldn't help herself.

"Rika!" she shouted.

The two soldiers at the door started to move forward, but Micolash dismissed them with a gesture. As for me, I finally tore my gaze away from him, and directed it back at my dear friend. The span of months we shared was far too short a time to pass between us. I remembered the blood, and the meals, and the sex we'd shared, and I felt a surge of bittersweet tang color the feeling of coldblood pounding through my veins. I smiled at her as beatifically as a saint. Without another word, Micolash took my arm in his, and the two of us walked together out of the White Marble Salon and into the realm of destiny.


	4. Transient Curse

Micolash gave me no time. No time to get my things, and no time to even say goodbye to anyone. He hurried me outside and all I could do was wave at my former colleagues, who looked back at me with teary eyes, fear, or sublimated longing. One of the Healing Church soldiers held open the carriage door and hurried me inside, with Micolash climbing up after me with an irritated grunt.

The inside of the vehicle was plush velvet, and clearly no expense had been spared. The walls were thick mahogany and I could barely hear the bustling city outside once the door was closed. The atmosphere smelled like incense, along with a faint, coppery odor that could only be attributed to the blood. There was a table separating the two benches of the interior. There was ingenuous device that could hold several books and stacks in documents in place even during a bumpy ride over cobblestone streets or unpaved highroad. With a muffled shout, the carriage driver snapped the horses into movement, and the wheels of the carriage clattered over the street below.

I stared at Micolash for a long time. He paid me little mind, instead directing his attention to a thick book full of diagrams and graphs. Finally, I tried to engage him in conversation.

"So, you're Micolash, a high lord of the Healing Church?"

He muttered something and continued reading.

"Where are we going?"

"The University," he answered in a flat monotone.

"Why?"

He finally looked back up at me, with a fierce glow of irritation on his face.

"Are you always such a chatterbox?"  
A less confident woman might have found him to be intimidating. But his shortness only annoyed me in turn, and I thought I had every right to know what he wanted from me.

"Now see here," I said, scowling. "I traveled half the earth to make it to the White Marble Salon and one day you just walked in and took me away from everything I built. You didn't even give me a chance to collect my things."

Micolash sighed. "I'll have your belongings sent for as soon as we get to the college."

"It's not that!"

"What do you _want_ , woman? Can't you see I'm trying to work?"

"I just want to know what you want from me," I finally answered in a trembling voice.

At last, I could see that I had the scholar's full attention. I don't know how he treated the other girls but I refused to be a replaceable cog in whatever machine he was running. I wanted _him_ , and I wanted him to want me. It was do or die time. I felt that this was my one chance to make an impression on him before he shunted me off to some functionary and never paid me mind as a real, living person again.

Finally, Micolash sighed and rummaged around underneath the table. He drew out two glasses of incredible weight, to keep them from spilling as we rattled over the uneven street, I quickly surmised. Then he took out a bottle of pungent blood and filled each of the glasses about halfway. The odor was strong, almost otherworldly. Even the Church reserve back at the White Marble Salon clearly had nothing on the blood available to the scholars at Bergenwyrth. He raised his glass for a toast, but I hesitated. After all, the Abbess' command still weighed heavily in my mind, and I was trapped in the center of a vortex of change that I had no control over. I knew that the threat of an unconscious eruption of psychic energy was very real.

Micolash held me with his eyes, and I couldn't resist any longer. After all, he surpassed me in power like the sun surpasses the moon in illumination, and he still had control of his faculties. We clinked our glasses together and I took a big gulp of the sticky, voluminous fluid. It was so thick as to almost catch in my throat. I could feel a warm, tingling sensation spread from my belly and radiate outwards, until I could practically feel my fingertips glowing.

"Well, I suppose it can't be helped," Micolash finally answered. "We research the blood at Bergenwyrth, of course. The blood, and many other things as well. Does it ever occur to you to wonder where the blood actually comes from?"

The question made me start.

"Not really," I finally murmured. "It just seemed easier to not ask any questions."

"You… your name is Rika, right? The Abbess mumbled it to me when I selected you."

"Yes, milord."

"No surname?"

I grimaced. "No. I used to have one, but I'm no longer a member of that family."

"Is that so? Well, such wastefulness is exactly the sort of sin that our Church has come into the world to cure. Tell me, Rika – do you believe in God?"

"Of course," I answered with a shrug. "God is the cause of all things, the mover who does not move."

Micolash smiled, but it wasn't a very nice smile. It was feral and ironic.

"I too believe in gods. But you should not misunderstand such beings. They are not friends to humanity, nor are they some great, impersonal cosmic forces. They are creatures of a kind of flesh, and a kind of … blood."

"…blood. You can't possibly mean…?"

"Theophagy."

"What…?" I asked, aghast.

"Or more precisely, theohematophagy. To drink the blood of the gods and thus become like them. The eyes of mind become open and one's sight penetrates the darkness of the interdimensional space."

I whispered, "How is that even possible?"

Micolash smiled broadly, and I felt an intense welling of psychic energy fill the interior of the carriage. The horses must have felt it as well, because they let out a troubled neigh and picked up their step as if wishing to get away from the vehicle yoked to their bodes. He put his finger on my bare knee and his touch was electric.

"We have one, Rika!" he rasped, almost overcome with his own enthusiasm. "A god."

Despite my awe, I couldn't help but feel a little sardonic.

"What, like – chained up in the basement?"

Another feline grin.

"Almost exactly like."

"How is that even possible?"

"What do you think the Healing Church is about? Long ago, our ancestors discovered a god, supine, immobile, deep within the bowels of Yharnam's foundations. From there, we discovered the blood, and Yharnam grew great. And no matter what certain retrograde atavists aver, the blood will be our future; the blood will be the foundation of our own ascent to godhood!"

In that moment I found it impossible not to believe him. Never before in my life had I been in the presence of one so powerful, and with so much disciplined passion to guide it. If there was anyone in the cosmos who could become a god through research and will alone, it would be Micolash.

"So where do I fit in?" I finally asked, in a smaller voice.

"Well." He coughed, and shook his sleeves. "Simply put, I need a female body. The previous experiments proved… unequal… to the task required of them."

"A task? A task such as…?"

Micolash chortled with self-satisfaction.

"To advance the task of raising up the human race to the level of the cosmic mind. In other words, to bear the child of the god."

I blinked. We were at the gates of the city, now, and people were scrambling to make way for an official Healing Church carriage. The guards waved us through the gates without a second glance, and we were out, into the desiccated forests that surrounded the city. It was almost a sad sight. In many cases the trees had been entirely removed to fuel the furnaces of the great of the great city, leaving only vast grey scars of emptiness between one hillock and the next. A few thin copses remained. They looked forlorn in the pregnant grey fog that frequently swept through Yharnam and its environs.

"And you really think such a thing is remotely possible?" I finally asked.

"I've come so close," Micolash exhaled with a groan. "So close I could almost taste it. But the experiments always ended in failure. The women just weren't strong enough. Curse the frailty of these hateful bodies!" He paused, and must have seen the look on my face. "But you're different. Stronger. More present. I think you might be able succeed where the others failed; no, I know it must be true! Rika, one day, you will be known as the common mother of the living, the wellspring from which all of the new humanity will be birthed!"

I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that, but his endogenous passion was enough to move me almost to tears. I'd throw myself into a pyre for Micolash. I'd do anything to see him come closer to realizing his ambition.

Micolash was sweating profusely and breathing hard; I could tell he'd been dearly taxed by the intensity of his own emotions. I lowered my head in affirmation, and he poured each of us another glass of the doubly powerful blood and took a big gulp. I sipped at mine, more in commiseration than out of genuine desire for more drink. Slowly, Micolash's breathing returned to normal. He went back to reading his book and I decided to digest what he'd already told me rather than disturb his reverie.

The carriage rose and sank through the rolling hills outside Yharnam, and it was hard to estimate the passage of time within the veil of glowing fog that settled over the region like a hen nesting her eggs. We saw a few others on the road. Here and there we saw a merchant's cart filled to the brim with produce or coal from Yharnam's far-flung mines. There were a couple platoons of soldiers marching home from some skirmish or another. A travelling alchemist, fleeing from one town to the next whenever the local population realized that his miracle cures were nothing but a mixture of water and lemongrass. I realized that Yharnam was a much vaster thing than the city contained within its walls. Its tendrils reached deep into the countryside, warping the fields and villages and estates around itself as though a center of gravity.

Bergenwyrth finally came into view, and its identity was immediately unmistakable. The campus was a small collection of dignified buildings situated around the banks of a small lake. The coach brought us up before one of the buildings, the largest, and ambled to a careful stop. In no time at all, a Healing Church soldier had the door open and was helping us down the ungainly steps of the vehicle. A small, brown haired, mousey woman was waiting for us when we arrived, and she regarded me with evident distaste.

"Ah, Rom," Micolash said. "Please see to it that Rika's belongings are retrieved from the White Marble Salon."

"Aye, sir. Where should I put her?"

Micolash eyed me for a long time, and I felt that something important hinged on his answer.

Finally, he said, "Instate her in my quarters, please. I want to keep a careful watch this time, personally."

"But sir," Rom protested. "We'll have to move so much equipment and –"

"Damn and blast, Rom! Must you contradict me at every turn?" Micolash demanded with an exhalation of annoyance.

Rom glowered. "No, sir. I apologize, my lord. I'll begin making the arrangements immediately."

"Please show her in. I must go see the Bishop…" Micolash muttered before walking away without another word.

"Follow me, please," Rom announced on a voice whose imperiousness didn't merely border on unfriendly, but was threatening to annex it.

With little else to do, I followed. The building was short and squat by Yharnam standards; only four stories tall but long and filled with rooms. Many doors were closed, but the ones that weren't opened into big lecture halls, or laboratories, or libraries almost overflowing with occult tomes. Rom walked at a fast clip as though she wanted to leave me behind. I followed, doggedly, trying to commit as much of the facility to memory as I could while keeping up with her pace.

"It'll never work, you know," Rom muttered under her breath.

"What?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking aloud."

I tried to engage her a couple times, but she answered with a quick, curt reply that prevented any sensible continuation. Finally, she led me up three flights of stair and onto the forth floor. At the end of the hall was door which she opened with a thick iron key and a faint glare in my direction.

"This is Micolash's quarters. You'll be staying here, apparently. You can read as much as you'd like but _please_ don't touch any of the experiments. Micolash is very particular, and you never know what you'll set loose."

She handed me the key, and continued, "This key will open any building in the university but it would be best if you didn't go snooping around. There are a lot of sensitive, not to mention dangerous, lines of research being pursued here. If it were up to me you wouldn't be in the university at all. But since you're here, you might as well avoid making a mess of everything. The commissary is on the first floor and there's an entrance to the main library on each of the four floors; you needn't bother, Micolash keeps all the good books in his private study. I'm leaving now – I have important work to do."

The inside of Micolash's quarters was so full of strange equipment that it took me some time to locate the actual bed where the man slept. There were great green cylinders filled with fluid, and sometimes if the liquid jostled just so, I could make out _things_ floating within. There was a table covered with alembics and crucibles, so haphazardly mismatched that I couldn't imagine how Micolash kept track of them all. A giant panel had several dials and switches on them lighted from within by means I couldn't recognize – as though the illumination had been distilled from flames and somehow made cold. Shoved off into one little corner was the man's bed. It was ragged and unmade, and I found myself wondering how much time the man actually spent resting inside of it.

The walls of the room were covered up by vast bookshelves, and books and stacks of papers lay strewn out across various tables, beyond all rhyme and reason. I didn't dare try to tidy anything up, so I picked a small corner and claimed it for my own. I was going to start picking through the bookshelves to find something to read, but my stomach growled, insistently, and I realized that I hadn't had anything to eat all day. So, after ensuring that the key was safely hidden in the pocket of my Healing Church habit, I went down to the first floor in search of the building's commissary. A few students scurried by, paying me curious glances but quickly returning to their own conversations.

As I walked past one of the doors, I heard the most piteous cry issuing from within. I stopped dead in my tracks. It was a whine of pure, undiluted agony, and in spite of Rom's warning I couldn't ignore the intensity of this tormented creature's need. I keyed open the door and saw a sight too gruesome for any painter of the infernal.

A man in a white coat held a clipboard and watched the vivisection of a dog. The animal was split from throat to anus, and hot red blood welled up out of the miserable creature's wound. The organs of the animal glistened under the bright naphtha lighting, and I could feel my toes curl up inside my shoes as the dog whined again. Its heart pulsed fast, faster than I could have ever imagined, moving webs of fat in and out with each miserable throb. I think I screamed, because the man in the lab coat suddenly looked up at me with suspicion.

"Who are you?" he asked with narrowed eyes.

I hestitated.

"I'm Micolash's new assistant," I finally answered.

This seemed to amuse the man greatly. "Har, har! So, Rom finally reached escape velocity, did she?"

"You're hurting him," I whispered.

The man shook his head.

"That's a common misunderstanding, young lady. But this brute is nothing but a clockwork of meat and blood putting you on with the _appearance_ of suffering. He doesn't feel a thing."

The dog yowled again, and I felt as though my blood were congealing in place.

"This animal is no more capable of feeling pain than a cuckoo clock does when the bell tolls the hour," the technician went on. "Watch this. I'll make his leg kick of its own accord."

The technician picked up some instrument I couldn't recognize; it looked something like a tuning fork but connected to a large, huffing apparatus. The man regarded the beast with educated care, and then touched the fork to one of the poor creature's exposed muscles. There was a sharp zap of sound and, true to the technician's word, the dog's leg jerked forward. Blood continued to slowly ooze from the animal's exposed gut.

"See?" the man asked with evident pride. "I can do that with any part of this creature's body. What we perceive as howls of pain are nothing more than the bellows of its lungs squeezing air through its vocal cords. A very clever simulacrum of human suffering, but an illusion all the same."

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the dog's fatty, greyish entrails. "How can you be so sure?"

"Because dogs don't have souls," he answered with something like pedagogical pity.

Without another word, I walked out of the room and closed the door behind me. I could still hear the creature's screams as the technician went back to his gristly work.

I got some food from the commissary, and numbly chewed and swallowed the meat with an ashen taste in my mouth. Is this the sort of thing they did in Bergenwyrth? No wonder the people of Yharnam held the university in such superstitious horror. Whether the man was telling the truth or not, I still couldn't get the animal's screams out of my head, and I thought back to my time as a girl on my parent's farm. If animals were just playing out an _appearance_ of parental attention, or pain, or fear, then they were certainly doing a convincing job of it. How could a person get so jaded as to dismiss it out of hand?

When I was done eating, I returned to Micolash's room. I had no desire to see any more of the university until I could digest the horror I'd just witnessed. Rom was there, goading a bunch of interns as they set up a truly bizarre spectacle. A whole section of the room had been cleared out and sterilized. Two students were hefting a large bed into place, while others were fiddling with unrecognizable bits of machinery or laying down cables of some inscrutable purpose. I knew Rom didn't like me much though I wasn't sure of why, but I still couldn't resist making my way to her and trying to understand what was taking place and why.

"What are they _doing_?" I asked when I could finally get her attention.

Rom shrugged. "Setting up a place for you. We learned a lot from our previous experiments, and you'll require a lot of medical attention if you're to survive the process."

I _definitely_ didn't like the sound of that. I eyed the strange machinery with distaste.

"Really? As much as all that?" I asked.

"Perhaps you'll be lucky. Don't ask me – I'm pursuing ascension in a very different way than Micolash is. But maybe I ought to thank you." Rom sighed. "If he's spending all his time worrying about you, maybe I'll finally have a chance to pursue my own studies in peace instead of waiting on the man hand and foot!"

Something about her tone piqued my curiosity.

"Do you love him?" I asked, before realizing how tactless that might sound.

Rom regarded me carefully.

"Maybe I did, once," she slowly allowed. "But things change. Sometimes as you grow, you grow apart, and eventually you just get too big to share the same space. Don't get me wrong; I don't hate him. I don't hate you, either – but you have the air of someone who doesn't belong here."

Before I could ask her what she meant, she went back to haranguing the students.

Finally, satisfied with their work, Rom scurried the larval form of professors out of the room and left with them. They left me a nice little space, all things considered. There was a big bed cleanly made with fresh white sheets. Now I had my own table, small bookshelf, and easel, in case I got the urge to paint. But the "medical equipment" still loomed large over the head of the bed, and made me feel quite anxious. For them to think I would need so much … I decided that the best policy would be simply not to think about it.

I was surprised to find several fantasy novels on Micolash's bookshelves. But they were all about strangely transcendental themes – about those who started out as human beings, but discovered their secret origin from somewhere beyond the stars. I spent the rest of the evening engrossing myself in one of the novels. The writing was surprisingly good and it was well into the night before I finally found myself unable to hold my head up any longer. I turned out the lights – or at least, the naphtha lanterns that actually had controls, the rest of the constellation of strange will-o-wisps in the room remained twinkling in the darkness – and finally fell asleep.

I was surprised when Micolash clambered into the bed beside me. I was indifferent, but there could be no harm in performing my clerical duty, I assumed. Micolash's lovemaking was like that of no one I'd ever experienced. There was little foreplay; he did the bare minimum required to convince my vaginal lips to part and swallow up his member inside of me. When he pumped, he maintained a steady rhythm from start to finish, never deviating, never altering the pattern of thrusts, in and out with the changeless precision of a piston. When he came he came hard, but silently, and I found his quiescence unnerving. And when he was finished he immediately pulled out and rolled over into the bed. I tried to hold him but he pulled away, breathing hard but otherwise totally silent.

"Shit!" he finally shouted, startling me. "What a damn fool thing to do!"

I tried to keep my voice from wavering. "What? Micolash, what's wrong?"

"Gods damn it! Rika, are you still taking the herb?"

I knew that he meant the flowering herb that we women use to stop our wombs and prevent undesirable pregnancies.

"No," I answered in a small voice. "I'm still on it."

"Shit. Well, stop taking it immediately, and don't allow a lapse in judgment like this to happen again."

"What… what do you mean?"

"Well, you're going to need a working womb to gestate a new god, won't you?" he asked in a voice syrupy with sarcasm. "But until we finish a course of the greatblood serum, there's no way for you to become pregnant with an incipient Great One."

Everything was happening so fast. Micolash continued to lecture me in an impatient voice.

"And no fooling around out of turn, you stupid woman! I know what your kind gets up to in the Salon and I'll brook none of that idiocy here. If you get pregnant with some lackadaisical student's lovechild, I'll tear the thing out of you myself and have you lashed half to death in front of the whole university once a week until you're fertile again!"

I couldn't stop myself. I started sobbing. Between the suddenness with which I'd been kicked out of my family home, to the long journey to Yharnam, to the short, strange, but happy life I'd led at the Salon, and then to be torn away and made into a lunatic's brood sow was all too much. With an impatient grunt of disgust, Micolash got out of bed and retreated off to one of his experiments to sulk.

Eventually, I fell back asleep, chanting a mantra to myself.

"Tomorrow will be a better day. Tomorrow will be a better day. Tomorrow will be a better day."


	5. Kin Coldblood (12)

The next morning came, in that way they always do whether you want them to or not. I was alone in the bed. I took a few deep breaths and then sat up, and saw that Micolash was buried in a stack of books in one corner of the room, studying intently. I took a few more deep breaths. When I finally felt composed enough to present myself, I shimmied back into my Salon habit, and started for the door of Micolash's quarters.

"Where are you going?" he asked without looking up.

I contemplated picking a fight, but thought better of it.

"The commissary," I answered when I finally stabilized my annoyance. I wasn't accustomed to being ordered around since I'd left home.

"Don't."

I could feel the bile rising again. "Don't _what_?"

"Don't eat anything. The course of Old One blood will be… rigorous. You'll just throw up anything you have in your stomach anyway."

"What have you _done_ to me, Micolash? Back at the Salon, I was happy!"

Finally, he looked up from his book.

"What I have _done_ to you is select you for the greatest feat ever performed by a human being. What I have _done_ is –"

At that moment, a terrified graduate student burst into Micolash's room, without even bothering to knock.

"Sir!" he cried, his voice shaking with horror. "It's Rom! She's…"

"She's what?"

"I… I think you need to see for yourself!"

Micolash snorted and closed his book. Suddenly, there was a loud, crunching sound from somewhere in the building, and the chandelier on the ceiling started swaying as if in the grip of an earthquake.

"What in the name of the Old Ones…?" Micolash spat. "Rika, come here."

I made my way over to him with trepidation, but I didn't dare refuse. As soon as I was within range, he reached out and grabbed me. I didn't even have a chance to gasp before he jammed a syringe into my thigh, filling me first with a sharp jab of pain and then with a spreading feeling of agony – and power.

"What did you do?" I hissed, as he quickly reloaded the syringe and gave himself the same treatment.

The warm tingle of blood was gone now, replaced by a roaring crescendo of pain that seemed to activate every nerve in my body. I gasped and doubled over, astonished by the power of the blood he had given me. Each beat of my heart made my head pound anew, and the sensation was like the blockage of a sinus headache, the sharp needle of a migraine, and the long term ache of a fever all in one. Micolash's eyes were wild under his sweaty brow, and the student stood near and stared, unsure of what to do. There was another resounding crash from downstairs, and I think there were screams, too.

"Come… Rika," Micolash forced through his clenched throat. "We must go deal with Rom."

"What happened?" I asked in equally strained tones.

"Fool girl must have been jealous. I told her it wouldn't work."

He stood unsteadily, and helped me back to my feet. I couldn't believe his strength. Step by bitterly painful step, we made our way down the stairs.

The building was in chaos. Nobody seemed to know what to do. Some students were focusing on trying to stabilize delicate experiments. It sounded like something evil had gotten loose somewhere downstairs, and I heard shouts and the occasional bark of flintlock fire. I hardly dared guess at what the soldiers were shooting at. One professor was even still trying to give his lecture on anatomy to a group of panicked students who didn't dare interrupt him and didn't dare leave. With my blood-intensified senses, I could smell black powder; wet dog hair; coppery blood; and something strong, frightening, and unrecognizable.

Finally we made it to the bottom and out of the building's rear door. It didn't take long to ascertain the source of the commotion. Towards the back of the building, on the lake side, was an enormous, terrifying monster. It looked like a cross between a spider and some kind of caterpillar larva. It was wet, wiggling, and entirely loathsome. Scores of eyes blinked at nothing. A few scuttling things hurried about, attacking soldiers and students alike.

"Ha! It almost… worked," Micolash gasped, still in the throes of the blood. We slowly made our way closer to the beastly thing. "Rom!"

There was no response for the creature. What did he mean? Could that horrible thing really be… Rom?

"Sudden increase of ectoplasmic mass overloaded her endocrine system. Epigenetic atavism reverted her to a previous evolutionary form," Micolash continued, keeping himself upright seemingly by the power of his knowledge alone.

I wasn't crying, but there were tears of agony steaming down my face anyway.

"Will she be alright?" I asked.

Micolash laughed coldly. "I think not."

There was a bright flash of light, followed almost instantaneously by a tremendous thunderclap that almost knocked me off my feet. A bolt of lighting erupted from the sky and smashed into the research building behind us. There were renewed shouts of dismay from the students and soldiers – the lightning had punched a hole in the roof of building, and set the top floor alight. Micolash swore angrily.

"Come, Rika. We must protect the university."

"But how?" I asked, rasping.

"We can't kill her… she's too valuable as a research subject. But we can't let her rampage here." Micolash strained his blood-addled brain, looking for a solution. "There's only one way. We must banish her into a bottled space."

"A…?"

"We have to open the door into a room that contains its own universe. Hold my hand, this isn't going to be pleasant. I've only succeeded a couple of times…"

Frightened, I obeyed. Before I could object Micolash jabbed me again, with more of the terrible Great One blood.

I didn't think it was possible but my agony redoubled. Everything became hazy, and started to shimmer. The voices of the panicking students seemed to get farther and farther away. I could hear the emergency bells of the university tolling across the lakeside, but something about the sound seemed profoundly wrong. Not just as though it had come from a distance, but as if it had _twisted_ on the way, making the clanging of the bells seem bubbly and strange. My eyes felt like they were burning from within, and reaching out with beams to burn everything in my field of vision. Micolash was gripping my hand so tightly I feared my fingers would break.

"Ri..ka… concentrate… with me… we have to snap this realm off… independent dimension…"

I concentrated on the sense of my psychic faculty and tried to understand what Micolash was getting at. The world was getting more and more twisted, like a piece of taffy stretching around an axis of firmament. I gripped his hand and tried to follow the motion of his psychic movement. It seemed as though Micolash were _trying_ to warp the universe around and around, faster and faster, to break off a small piece and leave it floating in the undifferentiated void, barely linked to its mother cosmos. In that moment I pushed with him. The white fog of Byrgenwerth gave way to the nothingness of – well, nothingness. We were too far away, now, to hear the sounds or see the sights of that place. With a painful, sudden snap, we broke free. We were lost in the void.

I couldn't see anything. I felt bigger than an atom and too large to even perceive the cosmos at the same time. I was drifting without going anywhere, or perhaps the universe was drifting through me. I could see all points of space and time simultaneously but it was perceptible to me only as a faint beige haze. I could sense shapes around me, colossal shapes. I was lost in a sea of energy and surrounded by awful, predatory _things_. The soup around me shifted turbulently as something huge and terrible swam past. I guess I was too small to even seem attractive as a meal.

Then, mercifully, the blood started wearing off. I got smaller and smaller; denser and denser; bigger and bigger. The sights and smells of Byrgenwerth slowly started resolving themselves from the chaos of the energetic sea. It was like seeing a magic eye daguerreotype – from the undifferentiated radiation of the void, the cluster of buildings and fire carriages and students slowly became manifest. I finally fell back into my own universe and stumbled to the ground. I'd never been more thankful for a piece of dewy earth to support me.

I must have fallen asleep, because I returned to consciousness a few minutes later, feeling profoundly ill. I puked up bile and stale blood from somewhere deep within my belly, and it burned and stank on the soil like acid. I finally rolled over and saw Micolash.

He was sitting with his head buried in his hands, and to my horror, he was giggling uncontrollably. I thought he'd lost his mind.

"Micolash," I finally asked through a vomit-burned throat. "Micolash, stop it."

That only made him laugh harder.

"I understand now, Rika."

"Understand _what_? You're acting like a madman."

"Kosm. The shape of the universe. With the right antenna, we can make the profane matter of this slow and dimwitted plane into a means of channeling the presence of the Great Ones."

The air was filled with the smell of smoke, but it was the black, angry smoke of a flame that was merely smoldering. The bucket brigade must have been able to put out the fire on the fourth floor.

Micolash's voice had almost returned to normal when he said, "Now I see. I know exactly what I have to do."

Almost.

Eventually, I felt well enough to stand, and the two of us went upstairs along with a few of the graduate students to survey the damage to the top floor. Several laboratories had either partially or totally burned, and several terrible experiments had been released during the chaos, killing several before being killed themselves. Fortunately the structural integrity of the building still seemed intact. Apart from some smoke damage, mostly to the ceiling, Micolash's quarters were unharmed. Without another word about the incident, Micolash immediately went to an easel and started drawing. Occasionally, he'd inject himself with a measure of Old One blood. How could his body endure that kind of stress? I fell asleep exhausted and in great pain.

When I woke up again, it was evening. I could hear the sound of somebody welding. I blinked my eyes open and saw Micolash and two students in one part of the room, working with a series of metal rods.

"What in Yharnam are you doing? Is it safe to use that thing in here?" I demanded the moment I could make myself heard over the din.

"Nothing can harm me now," Micolash replied, obliquely. "I was promised by the Great One, Kos."

I shook my head. My belly gurgled in protest.

"Can I go get something to eat, now?" I asked, hands on the hips of my habit.

Micolash waved me off. "Fine, fine. This won't be ready before tomorrow, anyway."

When I entered the commissary, the loud gossip of students and faculty deadened into silence. It made me feel uncomfortable. Obviously, I was implicated in the events of the day along with Micolash, though wasn't it really Rom's fault in the first place? That stupid woman had the power to turn my day to shit even from another universe. Nobody said anything as I got a tray with fruit and sausage and retreated into a corner under a stairwell.

I ate mechanically, for sustinence, not pleasure. I tried to think about what had happened while we'd been drowning in the sea of energy and I found I could barely remember anything. Just vague, elastic shapes, and my own feelings of terror and dismay. I wondered what Micolash had seen. Since he was more powerful than me, it must have been even worse for him, I reasoned.

The rest of the day was an exercise in listlessness. So was the next. And the next. I tried attending a few lectures, but most of it I couldn't understand, and the parts I did understand disgusted me. Bereft of the womb closing herb, my cycle started again, and added an unwelcome flush of hormones to my already addled mind and body. Micolash spent the days fine tuning his instrument, which he called an "antenna," after the anatomy of an ant or cockroach. The thing looked stupid and only the Old Ones knew what he had in mind for it. I shuddered at the thought that my sarcasm might in fact be entirely accurate.

So I stumbled mechanically from one day to the next, waiting for the next terrible event. It wasn't long in coming.

At first I thought it was nothing. "Dorm plague" was a phenomenon well-known and joked about among the students; when one person got sick, the confined quarters generally led to a universal outbreak of misery. When it was a cold or flu, it was usually nothing more than an inconvenience. But this time something darker was happening. It only struck a few students down, but their skin turned ashen and the sickness seemed to do something to their brains. Like advanced stages of syphilis, or rabies, the illness increased aggression in its victims to a fever pitch. The infected were quarantined and rendered over to Gehrman for study. Nobody said much about it to me. Around the college, most people treated me as impersonally as any other experiment.

During this time, Micolash was entirely absorbed in his project, which he eventually dubbed the "Mensis Cage" for reasons that were entirely alien to my understanding. Though he didn't pay much attention to me himself, he obviously dragooned some of his students to follow me everywhere, which they did with varying degrees of surreptitiousness. I guess he didn't trust me to not wander off and get pregnant when he wasn't looking. One day bled into the next, and it all become a lackluster haze of eating, sleeping, and trying to keep myself from going insane from boredom.

"Rika!"

He startled me awake so suddenly I started choking on my own saliva.

"It's done!"

I looked up. He looked like an idiot.

"You look like an idiot," I observed.

"Tch! The typical naysaying of the ignorant! With this antenna around my head, I can see through all illusions, and hear the whispers of the Great Ones no matter what the distance between us!"

There was no delicate way to put it. He was wearing a large, heavy, rectangular matrix of metal around his head, standing several feet high. I could only imagine how much shoulder pain the asinine thing would end up giving him.

"They're already reproducing them in the university workshop," Micolash went on. "Soon I'll have dozens to offer to my most promising students! And to you, of course."

"I'm not wearing one of those." It wasn't a tough decision to make.

Micolash spat, "You don't have a choice. It's the only way to guarantee the old ones can shape the fetus from a distance."

I sighed. I didn't know if I should double down or just give in. What was I doing at Byrgenwerth, anyway? One thing I definitely wasn't doing was have a good time. Micolash must have seen my indecisiveness, because his voice grew softer.

"Rika, please try to understand. Kosm told me there's no _limit_ to human potential, if only we see this project through to the end. I know that it's stressful, and frightening, and boring. But if you can just stick up with nine months of misery, you'll usher in a golden age for all humanity! The end of poverty! The end of disease! The end of aging! In strange aeons, even _death_ may die!" Micolash cried, his eyes flashing with something that could have been genius, madness, or both.

"I don't want that anymore! I just want to go back to the Salon! While I was there, for the first time in my _entire life_ , I was finally happy!"

Micolash grew cold. Colder than I'd ever seen him.

"You're not leaving here, Rika. You're too important to this project." He whispered an aside to a nearby aide. "You are the key to the whole thing."

So, that's how I became Micolash's prisoner. He stationed guards outside the door, and on the ground floor, as well, to guarantee that I couldn't escape from a window. He placed a Mensis Cage around my head and closed it with a padlock to which only he had a key. It was heavy, and it hurt me so terribly that I ended up spending most of my days in bed with little to do except read or sketch. From that point on, every day was very much the same. He would awaken me at dawn, inject us both with a dose of the terrible Great One blood, and fuck me with the same mechanical apathy that he'd demonstrated on the first time we'd bedded. They'd test my stool and urine and blood for signs of pregnancy. Then I could eat, and, if my strength was up to it, I'd get out of bed for an hour or two, still weighted down by the terrible cage. I'd spend hours a day masturbating. Not for pleasure, but just for something, anything, to fill the terrible stretch of time that extended before me like a nightmare. Micolash paid me precious little mind beyond the strictly procedural, and it quickly became obvious that the guards were forbidden to talk to me.

Finally, the day came.

"Excellent news," Micolash explained. "You're finally pregnant."

I said nothing. I don't know if I was relieved that the end was finally within sight… or if I was filled with unrelenting dread.


	6. Late Moon Grass

The days of my pregnancy were much like the previous days of my captivity, only even more interminable. The guards still wouldn't pass so much as one word to me. Conversation with Micolash steadily became useless – he withdrew more and more deeply into madness, raving at length about a spreading plague; Kos; Kosm; and the blood only knew what else. He injected me frequently with courses of Great One blood, secreted up from some chthonic prison deep within the twisted bowels of Yharnam. Along with the signs and symptoms of pregnancy I had a non-stop headache from the overstimulation of constant injections of blood. That, however, was not even the worst of it.

Of all the deprivations unleashed upon me, the one most awful was the Mensis Cage. I was surprised to discover that true to Micolash's word, it did seem to amplify distant whispers of blood-stirred torments from just beyond the edges of my vision. Time and again I could feel things scuttling along my body, but when I tried to brush them off with a creeping horror, I found that there was nothing there. The whispers went on and on. I could feel great entities, alike in kind to those we'd seen while exorcising Rom from this plane, reaching down through the antenna and caressing my belly, moving and shaping the child growing within. I was helpless to resist. Any time I tried to summon enough will to block the creatures from my mind, they would fill me with a sense of agony and dread so immense as to leave me a quailing, helpless, infantile thing. Eventually I stopped trying and they carved their strange initials into the creature growing in my belly without resistance.

Without anyone to have a meaningful conversation with, I felt like I was drowning in the deepest oubliette. At least there were the books, which I read voraciously whenever I was able to able to ignore my pain and the whispers for long enough to concentrate. I kept my mind occupied with the thought of distant cities and exotic cultures. Sleep came to me often, but my dreams were filled with intimations of existential horrors. Better, then, to watch Micolash's mechanical clock tick through the seconds, minutes, and hours in their never-ending circles.

Over the course of that time, I was subjected to all manner of humiliations and inequities. Micolash used some loud and strange machine and was able to take daguerreotypes of the inside of my body through a device that seemed half technology, half sorcery. I was no longer allowed to wear clothing – so much the better to document the burgeoning of my belly, he said – but there was no romance or sensuality in his gaze, only cold, clinical, sterile documentary. For a few days I refused to eat or drink anything, but Micolash threatened me with an infernal device that he said could feed me against my will, and I didn't dare to resist him. There was no point, anyway.

Micolash spent little time in his quarters, instead turning his attention to other things. When he did return he rarely cared to pay me any mind. He had books full of anatomical drawings of dogs, wolves, and creatures more horrible besides – some seemed to be the unholy amalgamation of man and dog alike, a 'were'-wolf, he said. Apparently some kind of sickness had been unleashed by Byrgenwerth's tampering with the blood. Still, I preferred not to converse with the terrible man, even for want of any conversation. I found myself hoping that the plague would swallow up Yharnam in its entirety.

Whenever he was out of his quarters, I listlessly searched the walls and windows for a means of escape, but Micolash had taken care of that, too. He'd caused bars to be welded over the windows and anyway we were on the fourth floor; there was no way in my condition I could shimmy up the chimney, and the doors had been reinforced as well as guarded from within and without. Trying to overpower the guard would have been an exercise in futility; I could barely stand, especially with my head locked away in Micolash's awful cage. Day after day my despair grew alongside my belly, and I began to pray to all the gods of heaven and earth that I could simply die of it.

In this way I carried my child to term. When the first contractions came, I didn't know what was happening, and I thought that my wish to die might be granted by the gods at last. It was late in the evening, and the last of the twilight was fading into a rueful, foggy, moonlight night. The naphtha lanterns flickered and cast strange shadows over the walls of the bedroom. Micolash grew aware of my groans.

"At last! At last! Kosm may you incarnate at last!"

"Shut the fuck up along with your stupid Kosm," I spat.

"Oh Rika, all your suffering is justified at last! You will be the new mother-"

"Yeah mother of the living, I'm sick of listening to you, Micolash." Another contraction came, and I strained with it, sweaty with pain. "Take the stupid baby and let me go."

"Let you go? I'm afraid that's quite impossible. You're too valuable as a specimen to simply allow you to run loose." He giggled, in the throes of some queer humor. "Guard! Go summon Gehrman! We don't know exactly what sort of being is going to born in this room, and we mustn't take any chances."

The guard left the door open as he scurried off to fulfill Micolash's orders, and for a brief, stupid second I imagined myself bolting through it and escaping. Then another contraction ravaged its way through my womb putting paid to _that_ bright idea.

"Hurry up, sow," Micolash said, bouncing on the balls of his feet like an excited child.

"I swear," I hissed gasping. "I swear to all that is holy; I swear to the blood - you will pay for your sins, Micolash."

Micolash started laughing, driven almost to hysteria by his glee. "Sins? I think not. As the co-parent to a god, I will be worshipped as the progenitor of a new humanity! Do you think they'll name a new High Holy Day after me?"

I couldn't think of an epithet vile enough by which to curse him, so I simply kept silent. After a few more body-wracking contractions, Gehrman entered the room, a severe frown on his face. He was dressed in the garb of the new splinter sect Micolash occasionally raged about, the Hunters, and he looked as lethal as he was handsome.

"What do you want, Rat-King?" Gehrman asked. I sensed long-standing enmity between the pair that was so rich that I fancied it was fit to make a hollandaise of bitterness.

"This woman will give birth to something … without precedent. See to it that nothing untoward takes place. And no matter what form the child may take, you must _not_ , _not_ kill it. Cripple it if you have to, but keep it alive at any cost, 'Sir' Hunter."

"Why should I take orders from you?"

Micolash scoffed, "Your job is to protect the university. If you're unable to put aside your personal prejudices in order to do so, perhaps you can be replaced?"

Gehrman looked unhappy, but he stood aside nevertheless and watched as I continued to agonize in the throes of a fresh contraction.

There's no gentle way to say this; giving birth recalls the sensations of taking a dry, constipating shit. The agonizing need to get it out of your body contests with the sharp muscle pain, giving you the responsibility of inflicting the pain on yourself to get it out. I poured sweat as I grunted and strained and tried to push the infant from my belly. In an unexpected moment of mercy, Micolash freed me from the horrible Mensis Cage, and I discovered a newfound lightness and strength with the thing removed from shoulders. I knew I'd never be able to stand properly again but at least I was momentarily free. Another muscle spasm shook my womb, and I pushed and strained with all my might.

"Damn it, Micolash…." Gehrman mumbled, standing nearby with his hand on his trick scythe and a grim look on his face.

"A brand new world is about to be born. You should be proud to share in this moment, 'Sir' Hunter, not petulant."

"Shut up both of you!" I spat.

With each fresh push I felt like I must be at the end. But it was still several hours of groaning, sweating, bloody agony before the infant finally began to crown. Micolash was beside himself with excitement before realizing that of all his sciences and dark arts, midwifery had never been on his agenda. In the end, Gehrman was compelled to step forward, and with one last, mighty, miserable push, I finally squeezed the creature from the deepest part of my body. Micolash immediately let out a piercing shriek.

" _No! Impossible!_ " he howled.

Gehrman kept his cool and handed the child to me. I gazed down at the fruits of my misery, and despite the horrors that had been inflicted on me, I was filled with a powerful sense of maternal love and connectedness. You were beautiful.

Micolash continued, beside himself with fury, "It's just a stupid human!? How could this have happened!"

Before anyone could react, Micolash reached out and slapped me across the face with all his strength. The blow bruised my cheek and the hot, coppery flavor of blood joined the stinging sensation.

"You fucking whore! You useless, miserable, subhuman _failure_! Who did you fuck behind my back? How did you manage to ruin my work!?"

Gehrman impassively reached down and snipped the umbilical cord while I tried to shush you. With just a tiny hint of a smile I realized that your shrieking was almost loud enough to drown out Micolash's ravings.

"Enough! Gehrman, destroy them!"

Gehrman looked up, scandalized. "What?"

"They're useless to me now." Micolash's eyes glittered with hateful fire. "To think of all the time and effort I've wasted on these fools. Kill them."

With that, Micolash turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.

Filled with terror, I whispered the only thing I could think to say. "Please… I don't care what you do with me. Don't kill my child. Please."

Gehrman glanced at the open door.

"Can you stand?" he asked.

Without the weight of the Mensis Cage, and with some of my headache abated because I'd had no forced injections of blood since beginning the labor, I felt better than I had in months. Exhausted; covered in the filth of birth; embittered – but better. Weakly I got onto my feet, and to my amazement, they held me up.

"Go. I can't delay them for long, but go. Micolash will not get his way tonight."

I took a few, hesitating steps, and almost fell over. But this was my chance to escape. I could feel more blood trickle down my legs and realized that I might be in danger without the attentions of a medic. But there was no time for that – this was my last opportunity to get back to the life that had been stolen from me. I could flee from Yharnam, make a new life in some other city far away, one untainted by the blood. This was my chance. I took a few more steps and settled into something almost like a stride, stumbling every ten steps, then every fifteen, but continuing to make my way forward.

The college building was like a ghost town. It was only twenty two hundred hours; normally, there would be students laughing and cavorting in the halls, and the most dedicated of researchers still hard at work in the labs. But the building seemed half abandoned. A thin coating of dust had settled on the banisters. Only a few of the doors had lights shining from underneath into the hallway. I didn't see any guards, so I hurried down the stairwell and out of the building's back door. It was difficult going but I knew that if I took it one step, just one step at a time, I could escape the terrors of Byrgenwerth.

I didn't dare take the roads so I stumbled into the grey, foggy woods that surrounded the college, heedless of my direction. A gravid moon shone into the fog and illuminated it with bluish light. Another dribble of blood fell from the place of my childbirth, and a feeling of cold dread settled in my stomach like a heavy soup. I might bleed out here, helpless in the woods, only for you to die in my arms after so many struggles. I needed to lie down and rest, and allow the wounds of childbirth to close themselves up. Instead, each step was only spilling fresh blood my insides. But I had no choice. Micolash would certainly kill me if he got his hands on me. The only thing I could try to do now was get you to safety, whatever happened to me.

I continued into the dark woods, with ferns rustling my legs as I pushed through the undergrowth. Some of the fronds were poison oak but I didn't even feel the rashes that bloomed at their touch. The ground smelled like wet loam, and the scent of earth was comforting, and distracted me from the metallic odor of my lifeblood slowly draining out of my body. I had no idea where I was going or what I was even headed towards – the only thing I could think was away, away from the dreadful Byrgenwerth. I plunged through the vegetation, all too conscious of the trail of blood drops I was leaving behind me. I don't know how long I was pushing through the dimness. All I knew was that every step I took put me a step further from the college.

I unexpectedly came upon a road, and stumbled to my knees in the dirt, stunned and wounded. I heard the loud neighing of a horse. Curious lantern-light illuminated me as I doubled over on the ground and threw up. A coach rattled to a halt in front of me, having narrowly avoided running me down.

"Oh my gods!" the coachman shouted in amazement.

"Henry, what's that shaking all about?" asked a voice from inside the carriage.

"There's a woman, sir! She seems in a bad way."

Too soon – all too soon – I heard the bells of Byrgenwerth in the distance, drawing its soldiers to a muster. My escape must have been discovered. Now it was only a matter of time before pursuers found my trail and overran me. It wouldn't have been too difficult to track a sweaty woman tearing through the underbrush on the worst of days, and the dribble of blood would only make it easier for the hounds to keep to my scent.

A man stepped out of the carriage and made his way to my side.

"Lady, do you need help?"

I shook my head.

"No. Please – take my baby."

"What?"

"Please. I don't care what happens to me. Just get my baby to safety."

The man looked dubious, but he took the bundle of blankets I was proffering to him into his arms anyway.

"Wait. Please…" I coughed. The irritation I felt wasn't in my lungs, but it was somehow everywhere at once. "Please let me look one more time."

He stopped and let me look on you. I knew it would be the last time I ever saw you, and it broke my heart to pieces. My womb was on fire; my legs were slicked with blood; I was dizzy with vertigo and blood loss. But having to give you away was worse than all of that combined, even as I knew it was the only thing that would keep you safe from Byrgenwerth's pursuers.

"Lady… you should join me in my carriage. I can get you to a medic," the man mumbled lamely, uncertain of his willingness to get involved.

"No." I shook my head earnestly. "Go. Hurry. Get out of here. The guards will follow me; I'll lead them away."

The man from the carriage looked dubious, so I spat as loudly as I could, "Go!"

With that, he gave me a curt nod, and he boarded the carriage with you in his arms.

"Henry! Let's go! This little incident never happened."

"Aye, sir."

The coachman rattled the reins, and the carriage started off down the well-traveled road. I could hear the man I'd given you to awkwardly trying to shush your newborn's cries, and I allowed myself a brief smile. But it only lasted for a moment. At last, there was only one thing left for me to do. I had to get as far away from the road as I could and carry the trail of my scent from where I'd surrendered you.

I reëntered the woods on the other side of the road and haphazardly stumbled through the undergrowth. In the blue lit night I stumbled over many scratching branches and into puddles, trying to ignore the howling dogs in the distance, searching for the beginnings of my trail. I walked as fast as I could force my body to go, heedless now of the dizziness of blood loss. I pushed through the swampy, brackish, muddy earth with a newfound sense of determination. There might be no way for me to escape, but the conclusion of my story would mean the beginning of yours.

When I stumbled across this log cabin, I literally almost ran face-first into it. It was imposing and dark in the moonlight. I knocked on the door and received no answer. I tried the door, which was unlocked; obviously, the owner didn't expect anyone to stumble across the building in the middle of the night unannounced.

"Hello?" I called out.

Netting no response I made my way inside and shut the door behind me. The darkness was so thick I could barely make out the outlines of the room's contents, but after enough fumbling around, I was able to find and light a naphtha lantern. The warm, flickering light cheered me a little, and I made a quick search of the cabin for anything which I could use to protect myself. There was a bottle of the blood in the kitchen and for a brief, agonizing moment, I considered drinking. With the blood in my system, I might be able to heal some of the damage to my insides, and perhaps survive at least until dawn. But with a quick jerk of my head I decided against it. I'd had enough of the blood, and enough of everything Yharnam. My parents had been wrong about many things – about almost everything, in fact. But they'd been right about one thing. The land of Yharnam was accursed.

Over the course of my quick search, I also found a flintlock rifle, and this ink and vellum. It's only a matter of time before they find me now. If I'm lucky, perhaps I have enough time to finish this letter to you. I want you to know that I love you, and care about you very much. I'm sorry I won't be there to hear you say your first word; or take your first step; or see you perhaps have children of your own someday, and hopefully under better circumstances. Alas! I can hear the dogs barking in the middle distance now. They might lose my trail for a few minutes here and there, among the fens, but they're close – all too close. They'll be on me soon.

I don't know if you'll ever read this letter, and I hardly dare to hope. But I fear that your fate is hopelessly entangled in Yharnam, as mine was. I don't know how or why you'll return to the cursed city. But I know in my heart that you will. All I can say is that I wish you luck. Someone must purge Yharnam of its demons and its horrors. I can only pray that you succeed, rather than being swallowed up in them as I was. They are nearly at the door! I will put down my quill and inkwell now. Perhaps with the flintlock I can at least take a few of Micolash's goons out with me. Oh please, Old Ones, do not swallow me whole! Do not metabolize me and make my hopes and organs into nothing more than cells in your body. Don't take me. Don't forget me.

Your loving mother

Rika

[AUTHOR:] Well uh – that's the end.


End file.
